One Great Stock

I suspect that you clicked this article -- promising one great stock -- because you want to grow your investment portfolio. You want to make money and learn more about the markets. And since you clicked on a Motley Fool article, you probably want to have fun, too.

Make money. Get smarter. Have fun.

That's how Warren Buffett has spent his professional life. Same with Peter Lynch and J. Paul Getty and Bernard Baruch. These investors made millions -- literally tens or hundreds of millions of dollars -- by seeking profit, pursuing mastery, and loving the game of investing for life.

There is no natural or preternatural law that says you can't do the same. And the fastest route there is to understand how companies achieve competitive greatness. What are the commercial features that help their stocks rise 10, 200, or 5,000 times in value? Here are three of my favorites.

Three principles of commercial greatness1. Replication. The very best public companies have a replication model that drives growth indefinitely. Consider a market-beater like CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) , which builds the same store over and over again. Or think about how Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) has expanded from its first storefront in 1993 to more than 600 today with only small variations to the same limited menu. Simple replication has helped Chipotle become a nearly $3 billion business in just more than a decade.

2. Residence. When was the last time you took a rental car through the car wash? Which have you treated better -- the home you own today, or your sophomore-year dorm room? We take better care of what we own than what we rent. The same holds true in Corporate America. Some of the greatest companies -- such as Nike (NYSE: NKE) , eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) , or Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) -- have leaders who've been there for years and own a ton of stock.

3. Resources. Master poker players know that in a game between entirely even players, the one with the most money will win. The same is true in business. It's why one great investor after another buys cash-rich companies and avoids those with mountains of debt. With more than $2 billion in debt, Six Flags (NYSE: SIX) lacks the resources to truly reward its investors. The stock has lost nearly two-thirds of its value since 1997 -- ouch!

Your one great stockIn Motley Fool Hidden Gems, we've discovered dozens of small-cap winners. And in a world where most mutual funds lose to the market, we're beating it soundly. We've done so by finding overlooked small companies that beautifully demonstrate the key principles of replication, residence, and resources. Such is the case with my "One Great Stock" for you today, which has already tripled for us since 2004.

The stock is Buffalo Wild Wings. This company has opened more than 400 restaurants, primarily in the central states of America (replication). The CEO and CFO have run the company for more than a decade, and the chairman owns a ton of stock (residence). And today -- unusual for restaurants -- Buffalo Wild Wings is expanding out of its own cash flows. It sports more than $70 million in net cash on its balance sheet (resources).

I believe Buffalo Wild Wings will nearly triple over the next five years.

And yet there's one of our Hidden Gems I like even more. Take a free trial, with no obligation to subscribe (I promise), and you can view our four dozen holdings, ranked in order of how well we like them, including my favorite small cap in the world.

This article was originally published on Dec. 1, 2006. It has been updated.

Fool co-founder and Hidden Gems analyst Tom Gardner does not own shares of any company mentioned. Chipotle Mexican Grill and Buffalo Wild Wings are Hidden Gems picks. Chipotle is also a Rule Breakers recommendation. eBay is a Stock Advisor selection. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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